


an old verboten route

by rosemary_boy



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 1920s, M/M, Praise Kink, Trans Crowley (Good Omens), like lowkey tho - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 00:27:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19800934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosemary_boy/pseuds/rosemary_boy
Summary: Crowley has spent the evening snaking his way between a number of parties, somehow making his way to Soho. He dimly remembers thinking he shouldn’t go to Soho, but he also remembers thinking that he really, really wanted to go. Somewhere along the way, he stopped caring about reasons and just started walking.





	an old verboten route

**Author's Note:**

> Crowley IS trans and they DO fuck. Female- and male-coded language is used at times.
> 
> EDIT 8/2/19: revised and remixed! story is the same but i fixed some grammar and a couple continuity things that were bothering me. i am king of Never Being Satisfied with my own writing but I'm gonna try my best to leave this one alone now

Crowley has spent his evening snaking his way between a number of parties, somehow making his way to Soho. He can dimly remember thinking he shouldn’t go to Soho, but he can also remember thinking that he really, really wanted to. Somewhere along the way, he stopped caring about reasons for things. At the moment, it’s far more important that he find another drink, and maybe a cigarette. He looks idly over the crowd, mostly just glimmering shapes in the haze, a few faces thrown into sharp focus in patches of moonlight. 

One guest in particular catches his eye. The one with red lipstick ( _ what? _ ) and a white suit that shimmers through the gloom, and cloudsoft hair, and two sets of wings humming on just the other side of spacetime.

_ Fuck _ , he thinks, and slouches a little lower against the wall. He still has time to leave, to call it a night, to blink himself back to the flat in Mayfair. He’s done it before.

But (just like always) he pauses to watch him for a few moments. He’s never seen him like this, but, then, he’s never really seen him alone with a bunch of humans. It looks like he’s outgrown that protective enthusiasm that used to come over him whenever he talked to one of them; now he’s all languid smiles and sharp, sparkly comments. Even at this distance, he’s maddeningly expressive, teasing the crowd around him with a flash of his eyes, a joking downward tilt of his lips. He’s very touchy.

Just as Crowley realizes he’s been staring for way too long, Aziraphale throws a sweeping gaze around the room and locks eyes with him. Crowley lets his head fall back against the paneling behind him in exasperation.  _ Stupid, should have just left, should just leave now, who cares about being rude, he’s the fucking Enemy you can be rude to him, you’re supposed to be rude to him (missed him), just leave already _ , but Aziraphale is already making his way through the crowd.

“Hello, my dear,” Aziraphale calls over the noise of the party. “So wonderful to see you, it’s been an age! What brings you here?” He’s smiling, and a little sloppy.

“I could ask you the same.” 

“I live in Soho,” Aziraphale says mysteriously. He fiddles in his jacket for a moment, pulls out a cigarette case, offers it to Crowley. Crowley is reaching into his coat for a miraculously-present lighter when Aziraphale leans in. His eyes flash white for a split-second, and a tiny flame appears at the tip of his thumb. 

“Careful, there,” Crowley says.

“Just a party trick,” Aziraphale replies easily. “Go on.” Crowley bends down to light the cigarette. A tiny curl of smoke curls up in the air between them, and then Aziraphale smothers the flame with his other fingers.

“Thankssss,” Crowley says. He takes a forced-lazy drag. Oh, yes, that was why he liked smoking. It was something to do with his hands, something distracting, for him and for others - Crowley wasn’t actually involved in nicotine addiction, or the tobacco industry, or even the annoying habit lighters had of leaking onto one’s nicest jackets, but he likes to think he was directly responsible for making smoking sexy. 

There’s only a moment of steely self-satisfaction before Aziraphale brings a cigarette to his own red, red lips and lights it with his same party trick. Crowley, for his part, focuses on not staring. 

He breathes in, deeply.

“Really, though - why are you here? Are you working? Meeting someone? I suppose it would make sense if this was when your lot, ah,” and Aziraphale pauses here, looks for a polite way to say it, “got your business done.”

Crowley lets out a short, sharp laugh. “Haven’t met with anyone since the Industrial Revolution,” he says. Aziraphale looks at him expectantly. “No, not here for work,” Crowley clarifies.

There’s something in Aziraphale's gaze. It’s something Crowley’s seen before, once, back in Paris, drunk and tripping outside the just-opened Louvre. He barely remembers that night.

(Aziraphale had pointed proudly toward the museum, had giggled and swayed and said, “There’s a painting of me in there.” Crowley had sneered, “Another one of your conquests?” and Aziraphale had looked at him for so long that Crowley felt like he was on display, with a little placard next to him:  **_Idiot Demon_ ** _ by The Almighty, dated sometime before 4004 B.C. Medium: stardust and self-destructive tendencies _ . But Aziraphale hadn’t said anything, and Crowley had swallowed his tongue before anything too nasty (or too revealing) slithered out, and they’d left the Louvre behind.)

Yeah, he barely remembers it.

Aziraphale taps the shoulder that isn’t pressed against the wall, and Crowley jumps. “Why, then? What do you want?”

Crowley peers at him hazily, through the smoke and the noise and the dim red light. What does he want? He wants to tangle his fingers in white curls, wants to smear his thumb over red lips, wants to breathe smoke straight into the angel’s open mouth. He wants to shove him up against the wall, to taste the gin on his breath. He wants to kiss him soft, slow, rough, dirty - he’s not picky. Aziraphale waits for a reply, and Crowley wonders if he knows.

“Ssurprissse me,” Crowley says. 

They’re in a ballroom, if you want to call it that. There’s just enough room in it for far too many people to pack in far too close, with a band in the corner playing their hearts out. It’s all very loud and fast and a little wild. Crowley idly thinks he might be a bit drunk. 

Aziraphale tilts his head toward the band and offers a hand to Crowley. “Shall we?”

Crowley eyes him, suspicious. “You’re not serious?” he asks. “Thought angels didn’t dance.” Nobody’s exactly sure when folks downstairs started saying that, but it definitely makes sense for Heaven to ban something as humanly enjoyable as dancing.

“We can. If we want to make the effort,” Aziraphale replies. He looks pointedly at his still-outstretched hand.

Crowley takes it, and finds himself pulled into the crowd and wrapped in the angel’s arms - warm but solid, nothing like the fever-craze of hellfire - a second later. Aziraphale is leading. “Angel, are you sure thiss-” 

Aziraphale shushes him. Crowley feels a little dazed. The angel leads him through an extremely complicated twirl thing, and Crowley ends up pressed even more tightly against him. He smells pine trees and cigarette smoke and something deeper, something brighter, something crackling at the edge of reality. Cosmic energy, or maybe just a really violent thunderstorm.

Something warm starts to unfurl in the pit of his stomach. The room is spinning - no, he’s spinning, that’s how dancing works. He lets his left hand wander from Aziraphale’s shoulder toward the back of his neck. 

“Crowley?” 

“Yes, angel?” 

“Why did you come to Soho?”

“Missssed the nightlife,” Crowley says, and his fingers are starting to brush against the little curls at the base of Aziraphale’s neck, and the angel’s hand tightens on his waist.

Then he reaches up ( _ now or never _ ) and twines his fingers in Aziraphale’s hair ( _ should have done this back in Paris _ ) and Aziraphale freezes ( _ should have done this back in Rome _ ), and Crowley can feel his heartbeat ( _ should have done this back in the fucking Garden) _ .  _ Too late to lose your nerve now, _ and then he looks into Aziraphale’s eyes and loses his nerve. 

“It’s really wonderful to see you again,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley takes a sharp breath.

“Careful, angel.”  _ Fuck off _ , he thinks.  _ I missed you. _

“Well, you know,” Aziraphale says, and his forehead crumples worriedly, the way it does when he’s said something not quite Close to Godliness. “Since we haven’t really been… working together, since St. James’s.” 

Crowley‘s stomach drops. “And whose fault is that?“ he asks, almost nasty, almost defensive.  _ I’m sorry, it’s mine, I should never have asked, but I’ll risk it all, who needs insurance when you have an angel smiling at you a couple times a century, I missed you. _

Aziraphale lets out a nervous laugh -  _ nervous _ ? “Oh, darling, please, enough is enough,” he says with a slight tremble in his voice, and his hand presses a little more firmly into Crowley’s back. He drops Crowley’s hand to pull him still closer, one arm around his waist, one hand pressed between his shoulder blades. Crowley is frozen, one arm still draped over Aziraphale’s shoulder, the other hand coming to rest at his waist.

Aziraphale leans in, until Crowley can’t see red, can’t see white, can only see the greenish-grey of stormclouds rolling over the desert, and Crowley is still frozen.

And then Aziraphale presses his lips to Crowley’s, and Crowley is still frozen.

And then Aziraphale tilts his head, just a little, and Crowley is on fire.

Aziraphale tastes like thunder and nicotine and a bit like raspberries. Crowley makes a small noise, almost drowned out by the band, but Aziraphale smiles when he hears it. The smile is sweet; the way Aziraphale tightens his grip is not. Crowley makes a slightly less small noise, and his hips roll forward half an inch.

“Darling?” Aziraphale whispers, and he kisses Crowley’s bottom lip, the side of his mouth, the corner of his jaw. Crowley takes a sharp breath as he kisses the soft, sensitive skin just under his ear. “Can I -”

“Don’t you dare ask permission to tempt me,” Crowley says, but it comes out wrong - not bored, not snappy, but pleading, desperate. 

“Is that a yes?” Another searing kiss, a little lower on his neck.

“Y-yesssssssss,” and then Aziraphale is pulling away, no, pulling Crowley away, out of the ballroom. They stumble past heavy-lidded men and women, glittering in the dark, up hazy staircases and down long hallways until they find an empty room.

Crowley closes the door behind them and crowds Aziraphale up against it with a hint of a snarl. Aziraphale’s mouth finds its way back to his, and Crowley’s knees go weak. He sags against the angel slightly, and then Aziraphale surges forward, grabs him by the waist and spins them around. 

Crowley sighs as he’s shoved against the door, and one corner of Aziraphale’s mouth quirks up. He undoes Crowley’s tie, pushes his jacket out of the way, and now he’s kissing his jaw, his neck, as button by button comes undone. Crowley lets his head fall back against the door, eyes slipping shut but flying open when a white-hot tongue flicks over his collarbone.

“A-aaaah-an-” He’s trying so hard to say it, to just say the fucking word, but Aziraphale looks up at him with an expression that would probably be a smirk if his teeth weren’t tugging at Crowley’s blessed nipple. He just about manages an “ngh” and arches his back off the door, pressing as close to the angel as he possibly can.

With Crowley slumped against the door, the angel’s a bit taller than him. Crowley looks up, as Aziraphale brings a hand to his jaw. They’re close enough for Crowley to stick his tongue out and lick into his mouth, but he waits, feeling the angel’s heartbeat pound against his chest as stormgrey eyes sweep across his face.

Then that white-hot tongue is in Crowley’s mouth, and his hands are in Crowley’s hair and his leg is between Crowley’s thighs, pinning him against the door, and Crowley lets out a noise that can unfortunately be best described as a whine. “Oh, darling,”Aziraphale murmurs. He takes Crowley’s lip between his teeth, bites down. Almost reflexively, Crowley grinds down on his leg. Aziraphale lets out a soft laugh, breathes into his mouth. “Excited?”

“Fuck off,” Crowley says, but he’s breathless, rutting against Aziraphale. The angel laughs again, bites again, searing hot on his neck. Crowley feels like he’s being warmed through, like Hell is melting off him, like he’s an icicle and Aziraphale is the fucking sun.

_ That’s probably blasphemous, comparing an angel to the sun. Pagan mythos, or what have you. _

And then Aziraphale’s hands are on his arms, and he’s being guided through the dark room until they bump into something soft. Crowley stumbles a little, but Aziraphale catches him, holds him upright, kisses him, burning and rough.

And then Aziraphale is sitting down on the edge of a bed and guiding Crowley down onto his lap by his hips ( _ his hands are on his hips _ ). He’s not afraid to touch Aziraphale - it’s not like he hasn’t been touching Aziraphale - but he waits for the angel to bring a hand up to his cheek, to stroke his cheekbone softly, to reach around his waist and drag him down. Aziraphale’s lips are swollen, red, and Crowley flicks his tongue over the bottom one tentatively. The angel’s mouth opens obligingly.

He settles in Aziraphale’s lap, grinds down slowly. Aziraphale makes a small noise, low and approving in the back of his mouth. It’s the best sound Crowley has ever heard, and he thinks he could listen to it for the rest of his life. He grinds down again, hopeful, but Aziraphale just smiles and grips his waist that much tighter, before letting his hands trail back to Crowley’s shirt, still half-unbuttoned.

“May I?” he asks, looking up at Crowley with an expectant smile.

“Mmfh. Yes.”

Aziraphale’s gaze travels from Crowley’s eyes to his lips, his throat, his chest. Crowley lets out another embarrassing little noise, something high and sharp, and Aziraphale’s got the rest of the buttons undone, and he’s pushing the shirt from Crowley’s shoulders and running his hands along Crowley’s shoulders and leaning up to kiss along Crowley’s shoulders -  _ fuck _ , he’s never thought so much about his own shoulders.

Crowley leans down to kiss him, hands snaking through his hair, bare chest pressed to Aziraphale’s shimmering suit. “Fuck this,” Crowley hisses, and fumbles with the buttons on the waistcoat, the fussy little bow tie.

Aziraphale reaches up, throws the tie over his shoulder. He shrugs out of his jacket, vest, shirt, and he’s warm like a bonfire, warm like a funeral pyre. Crowley hesitates, waiting for his skin to burn, to catch fire, but Aziraphale is kissing him again, harder, one hand clenched firmly in his hair. His other hand is slipping along Crowley’s waistband.

“Fuck,” Crowley says again.

“Yes?”

“Yes.” Aziraphale’s eyes flash lightning-white again, and he grabs Crowley by the hips, pushes him back, stands up, all supernaturally fast. He spins Crowley around and eases him back onto the bed. His trousers are gone in a moment, and then Aziraphale is on top of him, and he can just barely see the shadow his wings cast on the ceiling above. The angel kisses at his collarbone, the hollow of his neck, his jaw, and then that spot just behind his ear. His hand is trailing down, down, down Crowley’s body.

“Yes?” he asks one last time, right into his ear, fingers resting low on Crowley’s stomach.

“Yes,” Crowley says, and then gasps as Aziraphale’s fingers slide down, brush over his cock, slip into him, burning-hot. Crowley bites his lip to stop himself from babbling, and the angel smiles lazily and flicks his gaze down, too.

“So beautiful,” Aziraphale mutters, eyes fixed on his own fingers fucking into Crowley. He hums thoughtfully, and turns his hand so his thumb can brush over Crowley’s cock again. 

“Fuck me.” And so he does, fingers pushing deeper and deeper, mouth searing kisses into his neck, kisses and sighs and another “beautiful” that Crowley isn’t sure he was meant to hear but that sends him hurtling toward something blinding and burning and bright. “Angel, please, please just fuck me, please, I’m so close, I’m so close and you’re fucking perfect please angel.” Aziraphale twitches his thumb again, and Crowley shouts, something wordless and obscene.

“Beautiful,” Aziraphale says. He kisses Crowley, tongue fucking into his mouth just as his fingers curl visciously inside him, and then he slides down his body, like a storm rolling in, and his fingers are warm but his tongue is a fucking forest fire, all holy spit and blessings and celestial songs wrapped around his dick. Crowley laughs out loud, harsh in the darkness. There’s no response, just a twist of his fingers, almost vicious, almost kind. 

Crowley’s shaking, arching upward, fingers gripping the bed, Aziraphale’s back, his own sweatslick hair. He hisses, and flames lick up and down his body.

Aziraphale murmurs something soft and encouraging into his cunt, bites at the inside of his thigh. A shuddering gasp; an answering hum, almost choral.

“Angel, I’m- I’m going to come.”

“Do it,” Aziraphale says, and his tongue burns against him.

He forgets to speak, forgets to breathe, forgets his eyes are closed until he opens them and sees Aziraphale, bending closer and kissing him. He tastes like salt, and Crowley runs his fingers through cloudwhite curls and pulls just enough to get his attention, just enough for Aziraphale to notice, to tilt his head down and whisper “I love you.”

“I’m yours.”

Aziraphale laughs at that, low and warm against Crowley’s neck. “Mine,” he breathes into the deep hollow, and sucks a bruise to match the smoke lined around Crowley’s eyes, curling out of his mouth.

“Fuck mmpf.” Aziraphale covers Crowley’s mouth with his own, swallows the words as he says them. Crowley’s eyes are closed again, but he sees the flash of white light just in front of his eyelids and feels Aziraphale’s suddenly bare thighs, soft and warm and solid under his own legs. He feels Aziraphale’s hands on his hips, feels the angel shift here, there, and -

Slick, slow slide, skin on skin in skin, inch by glorious fucking inch, and Crowley’s sure there will be celestial fingerprints seared into his hipbones and he thrusts up against strong, soft hands. “Fuck me.”

Aziraphale fucks him.

“Fuck.”

Aziraphale pulls back just far enough to run a thumb along his cheekbone, to whisper, “You’re so good, Crowley,” and Crowley feels something cold and sulphurous crack open deep in his chest, and he rakes his fingers down the angel’s back. “You feel so good, you’re so lovely, I love you.” Crowley’s started mumbling, hopelessly sibilant, something that he thinks maybe used to be a prayer.

“Look at me,” Aziraphale whispers, and Crowley looks and sees white feathers flashing through the gaps in dimensions, sees the first stormclouds above Eden swirling in the angel’s eyes.

“I want -”

“Yes?”

Aziraphale snaps his hips a little harder, and Crowley’s head jerks back, eyes snap shut. “Yes,” Crowley breathes, “yes, fuck, angel.”

“Look at me,” Aziraphale repeats, and grabs his hair, pulls until Crowley is staring at him again, following lightning-arcs across his eyes.

Crowley comes with another shout, still obscene, far from wordless.

After, as Crowley sits on the side of the bed with a cigarette between his lips, Aziraphale says, “Haven’t heard that name in a long time.” He sounds winded. He reaches for the cigarette.

Crowley shrugs, lets him take it. A long moment passes, punctuated only by a low rustling burn, a slow breath, a slowing heartbeat.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from "Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out" by The Antlers, which also contains the line "you and I, divine but not devout" and makes me lose my fucking mind.
> 
> Fic HEAVILY inspired by [this amazing fanart](https://yumbles.tumblr.com/post/185966375578/crowley-and-aziraphale-run-into-each-other-in) and the song that was posted with it, "Zu Asche, Zu Staub" by Severija.
> 
> Also heavily inspired by MSheen’s performance in Bright Young Things! A lot of powerful horny energy goin’ into this!!
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](https://rosemary-boy.tumblr.com) :-) come say hi!


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